Eschner, K. (2019, February 20). If fruit flies live without sleeping, why can’t I? Popular Science, Retrieved from https://www.popsci.com/fruit-flies-sleep-science

This Popular Science, written by Kay Eschner, addresses whether not sleeping is truly life threatening or if it is a false assumption. After studying fruit flies by keeping them awake, it was found that the lifespan of a fly would only decrease by six to eight percent. A detector would be able to notice when they become still for over 20 seconds and wake them up. Previous tests on other animals, such as dogs and rats, were a failure because they would not be able to handle the stress from being woken up. Although sleep may not be essential to go on living, it does affect your cognitive thinking and functioning. Therefore, getting no sleep is technically not fatal if you are in a safe lab environment, facing no stress. However, sleep is essential in the real world where cognitive thinking is needed to face or prevent stress.

Several aspects of this article were unexpected. I assumed that the study would conclude in showing that the fruit flies were unable to survive, it surprised me when the the results were the opposite. Secondly, after learning that the fruit flies did not need to sleep, I questioned why the outcome of sleep deprivation effects humans so differently. This question was then answered and supported by previous studies conducted, which showed that being woken from short amounts of sleep after a long period of time, can cause fatal stress, and prevents proper thinking. An interesting part of this article was where descriptions of how different species sleep and the amount that they need were included, afterwards, it was disclosed that the bare minimum amount of sleep that humans need to function was still not confirmed.

Kat Eschner is a journalist, her topics mainly include science, animals, and history. She has a history degree from the University of Victoria, and did a Master of Journalism at Ryerson University. By including the details of how this study was conducted, the author was able to provide proper reasoning behind the conclusion the researchers came to. She also explains why this study is helpful, which is to prove that sleep is not as necessary as food is, and that it would provide more information to treat those who have sleeping disorders. The tone that was used to write this article was reader friendly, which made it easy to understand what the author was trying to say. The opening directly suggests that it was written for the general public by discussing an issue that is common.